Erik J. Freeman
Assistant Professor - American West
Education
Ph.D. University of Connecticut
M.A. Brandeis University
B.A. Brigham Young University
Research Interests
History of the American West; Transnational Social Movements; Economic History; Environmental History; Mormon History; Native American and Indigenous History; Local and Public History.
Books
A Radical Convergence: Latter-day Saints and their Utopian Socialist Origins (Under Contract with University of Illinois Press, anticipated publication 2026)
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
“Settler Histories, Memories, and Ecologies of the Great Basin: Slow Violence and Affective Dissonance in the Monuments of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers,” in Experiencing War Memorials, ed. Jenn Ladino (forthcoming with the University of Alabama Press).
with Catherine S. Freeman, “Vodou, Voodoo, et Mormonisme: l’Histoire des Saints des Derniers Jours en Haïti et les Idées Discriminatoires contre le Vodou Haïtien,” Journal of Mormon History, Special Multilingual Issue, 49, no. 5 (November 2022).
“‘True Christianity’: The Flowering and Fading of Mormonism and Romantic Socialism in Nineteenth-Century France,” The Journal of Mormon History, 44, no. 2 (April 2018).
Selected Book Reviews
Stephen G. Hyslop, Building a House Divided: Slavery, Westward Expansion, and the Roots of the Civil War, in Journal of the Civil War Era (June 2025).
LaJean Purcell Carruth and Ronald G. Watt, Liverpool to Great Salt Lake in Pacific Northwest Quarterly, (Summer 2023).
Benjamin Park, The Kingdom of Nauvoo: the Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier in Communal Societies, 40, no. 2 (2021).
Deagan Miller, This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent in Communal Societies 39, no. 1 (2019): 61-64.
Selected Fellowships and Grants
Domestic Young Scholar Grant, Church History Library and Museum, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2023-2024
Draper Dissertation Fellowship: University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, University of Connecticut 2021-2022
Center of Communal Studies Research Fellowship: University of Southern Indiana, 2021
Charles Redd Fellowship for Western American History: Charles Redd Center, Brigham Young University, 2020-2021
Current Projects
Frank Grouard’s West: Sitting Bull’s Mixed-race Polynesian Mormon Brother who became a Famous Army Scout